EXPLORING THE GLORIES 

 FIRMAMENT 



OF THE 



By William Joseph Showalter 



Author of ''Chicago Todav and Tomorrow," "New York, the Metropolis of Mankind," "Steel, 

 Industry's Greatest Asset," "How the World is Fed," etc. 



D 



EALIXG with distances in the 

 endless reaches of space where 

 a million miles are but as an 

 inch in terrestrial measurements ; study- 

 ing worlds that are as much larger than 

 ours as a mountain is bigger than an 

 ant-hill ; gauging the velocities of celes- 

 tial travelers that outfly the speediest 

 Spad that ever chased a Hun as an ex- 

 press train outruns a snail : reckoning 

 with forces that make the tremendous 

 eruptions of a Katmai seem weaker than 

 the bursting of a mustard seed, the as- 

 tronomer is an explorer of realms that 

 overpower the layman's comprehension 

 and overwhelm his imagination. 



But luckily this layman can check up 

 the celestial geographer in a way at once 

 dramatic and convincing. The grapes 

 brought back by Joshua when he was 

 sent to spy out the Promised Land were 

 not half as sure a corroboration of his 

 story as are the fulfilled prophecies the 

 astronomer brings back from his incur- 

 sions into the depths of space. 



He tells of stars that are trillions — 

 aye, sextillions — of miles away ; of suns 

 that are hundreds, and even thousands, 

 of times as bright as the orb of our 

 day; of forces that are thousands, and 

 even millions, of times as great as the 

 power with which the earth sweeps 

 round the sun. 



THE ASTRONOMER AT THE BAR 



Does he know what he is talking 

 about? Let us put him on trial and see. 

 Our witnesses shall be heavenly bodies 

 and forces themselves. The first one we 

 shall call, out of the thousands who could 

 testify, is a comet — Halley's. Here is its 

 evidence : 



"Yes, I'm a comet. For countless 

 generations I had been swinging through 

 space. When I approached the earth 

 men believed me a messenger of evil. 

 They knew precious little about me or 

 my kind. In 1682 I appeared on one 



of my excursions into realms bounded by 

 the earth's orbit. A little before that Sir 

 Isaac Newton had worked out the funda- 

 mental principle of celestial mechanics, 

 namely, the law of gravitation. 



"He had a friend by the name of 

 Halley. This man undertook to see 

 whether or not I was subject to that law, 

 and whether, indeed, Newton's interpre- 

 tation of it was correct. Looking back 

 over the twenty- four comets that had 

 been recorded as invading the precincts 

 of space set aside for the earth, he found 

 that three of them had traveled a similar 

 path and all the others diverse paths. 



"Applying Isaac Newton's law to me, 

 he said that I was traveling thirty-four 

 miles a second when I was nearest the 

 sun, and that I had turned round and 

 was headed for the regions whence I 

 had come. He said I would travel out 

 into space some three billion miles, my 

 gait slowing down as I journeyed, and 

 that when I got ready to make the turn 

 to come back I would be loafing along 

 at the celestial snail's pace of a mile a 

 second. 



PREDICTED /5 YEARS AHEAD 



"Furthermore, he figured out my mass 

 and many other details about me. Then 

 he said that if he was right I would come 

 back in about seventy-six years, the exact 

 month of my coming depending on how 

 much influence Jupiter and other planets 

 would have upon me, which he had not 

 had time to calculate. 



"I knew that he had fathomed my 

 mystery and solved my secret. But the 

 people of the earth did not. They said: 

 'Oh. yes, Halley is a cheap-John notori- 

 ety-seeker. He is trying to get fame by 

 a prediction that will attract attention, 

 but he postpones the date of the comet's 

 reappearance to a time when he is dead 

 and his forecast forgotten !' 



"But Halley 'stood pat' and called on 

 an impartial posterity to witness that it 



